I haven't worked out since Monday morning, I'm averaging about 6.5 hours of sleep each night, and I'm taking in copious amounts of caffeine just to keep moving. So what's happening these days? I started working on my bachelor's degree (finally) with Brandman University and have made it through my first 8-week term completing two classes with A's in both of them. I got a whole week off that was absolutely GLORIOUS, but started back up this past Monday...and I don't know why, but the first week of the term is always a brutally rough re-entry that leaves me feeling like I will spontaneously combust at any moment. (Side note: how bizarre is it that "combust" has a red wavy line and is not recognized as a word at all?!? It wants me to change it to com-bust. What kind of dictionary is this using anyways?!? hahaha)

Work is also crazy busy these days. The semester started a few weeks ago and as everyone settles in, business really ramps back up, so there's lots of projects and meetings and other tasks to contend with.

I do have a family, but I barely see them right now. So I'm pretty sure they exist...I just can't confirm that through actual time spent with them. HA!

But other than feeling like life is kinda outta control these days, I'm plugging along. I had an awesome week-long exercise streak that I'm glad I got so I could at least SEE that it was possible...never mind that it was during the break between terms so it probably isn't likely to happen again anytime soon.

Since it is all kind of like a train hurtling towards a brick wall, I'm getting back to the basics as much as possible: writing to-do lists, getting time in nature as much as possible, eating well as much as possible, getting a somewhat decent amount of sleep, getting workouts in (okay, not this week, but starting tomorrow I am rectifying that situation!), and listening to relaxing music. I've got this...I know I do. I just need to focus on the things that matter!

I've recently found an artist that I've had on my iPhone for the past several years and never really listened to! A friend of mine had shared him with me and I remember listening to it, but not really getting into the groove of it and quickly bouncing off to something else, never returning to it again. But then about a month back I was doing some homework in Starbucks and this song came on that just completely GRABBED me out of nowhere, so I asked Siri what song it was and lo and behold, it was this artist that I recognized the name of, and knew that I had his album in my library but had never listened to. So I started listening to the album, only about 4 years after getting it, and it just was perfect for the time in my life right now. It's always funny to me how sometimes music is like that - we hear it at a specific time in our life and it just doesn't click, but then later, we hear it again and it's like it was created just for this moment in time. So that artist is Ben Howard and the song that I heard in Starbucks is Gracious...take a listen and enjoy!